Were they actually prostitutes? Or were they women hired to decorate a party room, some of whom voluntarily had sex with Woods. Their compensation was the same as other women in the room who didn't have sex with Woods.

That's not to say that what Woods did was okay, but to question the notion that the trollops were prostitutes.

It's going to be hard to prove in court, and seems like the higher the price for the escort, the less likely the customer will face legal sanction. Social discomfort, and loss of prestige seem just as severe, though, as the poor schlub caught with a $50 street walker (if not more so, given that a poor schlub has less to lose than a Tiger Woods or Eliot Spitzer).

A twist in the Tiger Woods saga I find interesting is that when it was mere domestic battery and/or DWI the authorities were attempting to investigate, they couldn't get in the Woods compound without a warrant.

I can guarantee that most guys that use hookers aren't worried about their looks, assuming they're vaguely attractive. I'm assuming the biggest draw is NSA, uninhibited sex, without the entanglements of a relationship. And there are certain things you might want to do, just not to/with with the mother of your children.

Girlfriend last weekend was explaining escort services to me. She has a friend who has used them, and tells her that she could (still) get $5k a night if she wanted to. I find that ludicrous.

But worse, that often doesn't immediately come with sex. Apparently, it can take a week to get the woman in bed, all that time wining and dining her, and showing her off to others. The build up is supposedly part of the allure.

Part of the absurdity of that is that with women in their 40s, there seem to be a lot who are on the 3 date plan - if they are still dating the guy on a third date, they have sex.

I wouldn't go so far as to argue that prostitution is victimless, but here in Nevada, where it is legal and heavily regulated in many of the counties (not Las Vegas or Reno though), legal prostitution seems to work just fine. The problem, from my point of view, is its illegality, and not its immorality. It is because it is illegal that the women get exploited.

No, he shouldn't. The only ones who should go to jail for engaging the services of a prostitute are those bible-thumping assholes of the right, and in their case the charge should be hypocrisy, which is a far more serious moral crime than the non-crime of prostitution.

Every other area of the sex industry is legal though. And porn and stripping are filled with used, abused, and broken women. The sex industry is inherently, by its very nature, exploitive. The legality or illegality of it have nothing to do with it.

It's not a victimless crime on the street/crackho level. More debateable on the high class call girl level.

But I support prosecutors going after Tiger Woods and his wife Elin. The cops and prosecutors would go after others for a drunk-driving accident. And, there is some evidence that Elin was committing an assault with a deadly weapon in front of children.

I support prosecuting to the hilt. Because, in the America of today, people across America are being caught up in our insane criminal justice system and being prosecuted to the hilt by insanely out-of-control prosecutors. We're setting a world record for the % of our citizens behind bars or sucked into the criminal justice system.

I can't speak about the media humiliation Tiger is suffering. I guess it's blowback from the media hype he enjoyed all those years. But with respect to the criminal justice system, he got treated special. It's time the rich and famous get abused by America's criminal justice system the way average Americans are. Since average Americans are living in a country that feels like a police state nowadays, let the rich and famous have the same. Arrest him. He was obviously DUI. First degree misdemeanor in my state. Lock him up.

The prosecutors trained by our esteemed law schools nowadays seem to be on a mission to lock up more citizens than any country on earth, so lock up Tiger too.

Fuck it. In some neighborhoods of America, it's unusual if you haven't been locked up on some bullshit. So, equal under the law, let's spread the hideous American justice system all around.

Legalizes prostitution then allow men to sue over the fact that there aren't anywhere nearly enough high-paying prostitution jobs out there (hetero) and that for every $1 a female prostitute makes, men only make $.10.

If he did it in Nevada, would it be legal, even if the woman was from New York State? Or would that fall into the Mann act (which ironically deals generally with WOMEN who are transported across state lines for use in a commercialized sexual encounter).

What's up with hiring hookers anyways? I can see if some groupie wanted to put Tiger's notch on her bed post bad enough where he simply yielded to temptation. Chicks dig good-looking, athletic, world famous, billionaires. But paying to have sex is just sad, especially for a theoretically happily married man.

Some commenters have already pointed out that you pay a prostitute for her silence as much as for her sexual services. The Rat Pack put it more pithliy: in a perhaps apocryphal story, someone asked one of the Rat Pack--Joey Bishop, Dino, Frankie, Sammy D., Peter Lawford--one of them, "You guys are famous, rich, handsome! Women throw themselves at you wherever you go. Why would you need to hire a prositute for sex?"

The person who was asked the question replied, "You're not paying for the sex; you're paying for them to go away the next morning."

From the point of view of a public figure, this makes perfect sense.

Should Woods be jailed for his use of prostitutes? No. And neither should the prostitutes. Perhaps pimps should be prosecuted, for enforced servitude or slavery or something, but an adult acting autonomously to perform sex with another adult in exchange for money should be free to do as he or she pleases.

And, there is some evidence that Elin was committing an assault with a deadly weapon in front of children.

No there isn't. Not a shred. It's just made up bullshit (and quite obvious to me, part of the initial attempt to do damage control on Tiger's behalf, though not on his request.)

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So if the relationship is purely sexual and the man buys dinner for the woman is that prostitution? I think there are plenty of high priced call girls who have way more integrity than women hooking up with a sugar daddy.

Spike Lee, Charles Barkley, and Michael Jordon are lamenting Tiger's new unlisted phone number; he needs to talk to his bro's, they believe, to guide him through the tsunami of get-down, be-cool, bitch-slappin' adultery.